Hudsonville teen back on field after beating cancer: 'Baseball is what really kept me going'

HUDSONVILLE, MI - Thomas Sikkema jumped up from his seat on the bench, grabbed a navy blue baseball helmet and jogged out to first base.

Being the courtesy runner for the pitcher isn’t exactly glamorous in high school baseball.

But on this day, Sikkema was no ordinary base runner. He’s a courtesy runner who was happy to put on a uniform again. A baseball player who spent most of the last year in a hospital bed. A player who lost his hair, lost his normal body weight, but never lost his smile.

The Hudsonville High School senior was diagnosed with brain cancer on May 17, 2013. And on April 16 of this year - the first day of the season against Unity Christian - Sikkema was back on the field. And he was genuinely upset that he “got sniped.”

Hudsonville senior Thomas Sikkema bats against Forest Hills Eastern on April 18, 2014. It was his first at-bat of the season and first plate appearance since being diagnosed with brain cancer last spring. (Lenny Padilla | Mlive.com)

“I courtesy ran (for pitcher Keegan Baar) and I got sniped,” said Sikkema, who was deemed in remission by doctors in November. “The ground was still wet. I was on first. There was a line drive to left-center field. I got to second base and rounded third and my coach waved me home. But maybe a quarter of the way home, he said ‘Stop!’ and I slipped and got sniped (thrown out). I left a huge divot in the grass.”

Sikkema, 18, later pitched in the game, which Hudsonville won 7-1. His team, which won the 2012 Class A state title, is 6-1 and ranked No. 7 in the state.

“He was laying in a hospital bed for four or five days at a time not being able to do anything and now he’s out there playing baseball with us again,” Hudsonville outfielder Curt Doornbos said, shaking his head. “It’s more like a celebration now. You can smile about it now.”

Hudsonville coach Dave Van Noord is happy to have his 5-foot-8, 180-pound spark plug back on his feet, not just back on the baseball field.

“It’s amazing that he’s alive a year later,” he said. “It’s great that he’s back in school and will graduate with his class. Then to top it off, he’s playing baseball again? It’s amazing.”

It was never Sikkema who stopped smiling. His friends and family were devastated when he was diagnosed and went in for surgery to remove a golf-ball sized tumor in his brain on June 3.

He never lost his sense of humor either.

“After I came out of surgery, they keep you kind of knocked out and have you slowly wake up,” Sikkema said. “My mom’s like ‘hey Thomas, how you doing?’ I looked at her and I said ‘who are you?’

“I was joking, but she flipped out.”

Doornbos smiles and shakes his head while listening to the story. Then he punches Sikkema in the shoulder.

“Why would you do that to your mom!” he asked.

“I’m a joking guy. It was mean, but I did it,” Sikkema said. “Everyone was laughing in the operating room. So, they knew I was alright.”

Thomas’ parents, Tom and Lisa Sikkema, dealt with the news differently. There’s no instructional manual to help you cope when you have a child diagnosed with cancer.

“My mom was OK,” Thomas said. “But my dad … you never want to see your kid go through that. My dad doesn’t like to show emotion. He tries to avoid it. He’s a strong dude.”

Before heading into surgery, the Hudsonville student body held a prayer vigil at the baseball field that was attended by about 500 people.

“At the prayer vigil, I could tell that he was starting to get emotional and starting to cry and stuff,” Thomas said of his dad. “He doesn’t do well with that. He doesn’t want anyone to see him like that.”

Doornbos said Thomas was the only one not in tears.

“Seeing him at the prayer vigil, everyone around him is crying, I was just as depressed as can be and this kid (looks at Thomas) is just over there smiling.”

Said Thomas: “I’m that kind of person. It is what it is. If you would have asked me when I was little if I would have reacted well to having cancer, I would have said no. But as I got older, (cancer) put things in perspective. If I freaked out, it wouldn’t do any good. So you might as well be happy about it.

“Everyone I talk to wonders how I can look at something so negative and make it positive.”

While at the Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital in downtown Grand Rapids last summer, Thomas spotted some familiar faces, which isn’t always a good thing.

Hudsonville High School senior baseball player Thomas Sikkema, left, lays in his hospital bed at Helen DeVos Children's Hospital with his buddy Spencer Meyer. Sikkema had surgery for brain cancer on June 3, 2013. Meyer, 8, of Hudsonville has been fighting Leukemia. (Photo courtesy of Thomas Sikkema)

Spencer Meyer, the son of Jason and Jodi Meyer, of Hudsonville, is only 8. But he’s a veteran in the cancer ward.

“He’s been battling leukemia for three years,” Thomas said. “His dad was my art teacher in elementary school and his mom was my gym teacher. I was actually part of helping with their engagement. So they are good family friends.

“Sometimes we’d be in chemo at the same time,” Thomas said of Spencer. “I call him my hospital brother. He’s kind of the drive for my baseball season. I actually look up to him because he’s got more fight in him than I have. He’s only 8 years old and he’s been in (the hospital) since he was 5, so that’s all he knows.”

Sharon Nienhuis, one of Thomas’ nurses at the hospital, said he wasn’t just a patient. He cared about the other kids on his floor.

“He’s an incredible inspiration,” she said. “I’ve spotted him checking in on the smaller kids and asking how they are doing. He was like a big brother to them.”

That’s why it wasn’t easy when his little buddies didn’t always make it.

“I’ve had a lot of friends up there that have died, which really sucks,” Thomas said. “Little kids. I was the oldest one up there. There’s been kids that were 10, 12 years old ... I hated it. That’s what really hit me. I never understood why they died and I didn’t.”

Nienhuis has been a nurse for 27 years, the last seven in the cancer ward at Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital. She’s seen the good and the bad.

Is she surprised Thomas is playing baseball again?

“In some ways I am,” she said. “Once you have a diagnosis of cancer, watching them go through treatment, they get very sick and lose a lot of strength. They are throwing up. It’s hard to believe some kids can get that stamina again. But in other ways, it’s isn’t surprising. He wanted to overcome this and get back on the baseball field.”

Thomas really connected with Nienhuis, who often was on duty when he was having chemo and radiation treatments. He calls her Momma Sharon. She attended one of his games this spring and was thrilled to see him on the field. He even says he wants to study to become a nurse when he goes to college at Grand Valley State next fall.

“I want to go into nursing, how about that" he said. “Maybe be child-life specialist. I want to work at Helen DeVos, too.”

Thomas Sikkema was named homecoming king during halftime of a Hudsonville High School football game on October 11, 2013. The homecoming queen, left, was Ashton Gosset. (Randy Riksen Photography)

Thomas also joined the board of a charity called Milan’s Miracle Fund. It’s named after a Grand Rapids area girl, Milan Capobianco, who died of cancer in 2009 at age 8. The fund helps fund pediatric cancer research.

He has helped organize the Milan’s Miracle Run/Walk on June 1 at Millennium Park and a charity Strike Out Cancer Baseball Tournament at Hudsonville on May 17.

“We’re gonna have tailgating, raffles, music, it’s gonna be big,” Thomas said with a smile.

The senior's teammates understood the magnitude of his comeback this spring.Doornbos turns to look at Thomas, who is sitting next to him at the table munching on a slice of pizza at the Pizza Ranch in Hudsonville.

“We go down to Florida (as a team) for spring break and he had been in the gym practicing with us, too,” Doornbos said. “But actually seeing him outside running around, catching balls and pitching, I dunno. It’s crazy.”

Thomas nods.

“Baseball is what really kept me going,” he said. “I love it. I mean, you can’t play when you are in the hospital dying.”

Since his surgery, Thomas got to visit with the Detroit Tigers and was even named Hudsonville's homecoming king.

“It didn’t fit that well," Thomas said of the crown placed on his head during halftime of the homecoming football game. "I couldn’t get it down on my head because it was still puffy and swollen from all the steroids. I lost probably 40-50 pounds after I was done. I got up to 220 and now I’m at 180.”

He got the news he was in remission Nov. 20.

“That’s the day you texted me,” Doornbos said, looking over at his buddy.